Love, Alexis | ✓

01

After a couple of years of fighting for every single breath I took, of feeling excruciating pain as my own body shut down and made me expire, I was granted one last wish.

Kids with my problem tend to wish something big, just like Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters did in 'The Fault In Our Stars', I'm not one of those people though. I have a very realistic perspective on the reality we all face yet see differently. I know obliviation is inevitable and that, when I'm gone, I'll just be that, gone. For good... No second chances, no goodbyes, no, no nothing.

I've made peace with that, I've had slightly over a year to make peace with it, one year full of chemo, drugs, trials, doctors visits, tears, endless pain but the worst part was seeing what my condition was doing to my family, what I was doing to them.

They tried to remain strong but you could see their despair through the bags under their eyes, the clothes that once fit so effortlessly were now hanging loose and wrinkled from top to bottom from all the nights spent on hospital chairs by my side, by the side of their only daughter, losing her life bit by bit, day by day until there is nothing left.

When the doctor gave the final prognosis my mother could barely stand, tears were streaming down her dimpled cheeks at a rapid pace, and even my dad, the person who always remained strong, no matter the situation he broke down too. I was then given the opportunity of leaving the hospital but there was nowhere to go.

A girl whose body had been reduced to nothing but flesh and bones, whose head had lost every strand of formerly luscious black hair and was now alien-looking, whose body could bearly keep itself off the ground for thirty seconds... There was little left, most of me had already been reduced to dust.

I didn't have many friends and those that I have slowly but surely stopped coming to visit me, I told them to get away. I didn't have the courage, I didn't have the strength to have them see me like this.

"You look like Mr. Burns," Alfie's brother said once. He was four-years-old at the time, it was cute, the last cute thing I'll ever see. The last and most adorable thing in my short sixteen years of living.

I assumed it would take a lot of fighting for my wish to be granted but I was wrong. My parents were reluctant to take me home, knowing my already fragile body would be weakened by this, yet they still let me go.

The drive home, my very last one, was made in absolute silence, nothing the buzz of traffic was heard yet I found it soothing. The uncomfortable silence was something I had become accustomed to and easily looked past, the children running around, playing in the cold and pearly-white snow while their parents gradually froze to death while recording that moment for later on in their lives to relive it.

At that point I wasn't able to walk, my legs would shake too much as my joints neglected to work and my own body weight nearly knocked me out of my feet. Dad had to carry me inside, as my mother carefully watched us, I noticed her lips were trembling, her cheeks still red and eyes bloodshot.

The things I was doing to this family nearly destroyed me more than cancer itself did. It was hard enough to have to live knowing everything breath you take could be your last one, that every moment that passed was one less moment to the end. The end of a lifetime, my lifetime, the end of a previously happy reign but now only filled with tears and suffering.

I was carefully put down by the fireplace, per my request. Even a phrase as simple and as small as that was hard to let out, I, for one, didn't to be this family's ruin. I wanted to be the strong periwinkle they once had, all those years ago. The Christmas tree wasn't even up this year nor was any of this holiday's decorations.

"Mom," I called her. "Mom, sweater..." You could barely make out what was being blurted out from my mouth yet my mom got what I meant and after leaving for less than a minute came back with my last birthday gift, a striped multicoloured wool sweater. After months and months of practice, my mom agilely put it on my tiny frame and covered my folded legs with a furry maroon blanket.